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A Little Book of Local Verse 

BY 

HOWARD MUMFORD JONES 

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With an Introduction b}? 
DAVID ORLAND CO ATE 




La Crosse, Wisconsin 
19 15 



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Copyright, 1915 
By 

Howard Mumford Jones 



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©CI.A411624 

SEP -7 1915 






Jl Little tBook of Local 'Verse 



To Mp Mother 



IWWe 



INTRODUCTION 

WHY should anyone write or publish verse in these 
times of the moving picture, rag time and the new 
dances, when any article to be sold must have practical writ 
large all over it? We are told that only the novelet, the 
short-story or the one-act play — provided it be a "problem 
play" — are read. Why in the Middle West should verse, 
local in interest and flavor, be written ? 

The answer is, for the reason that it is local. The 
author of "A Little Book of Local Verse" believes that too 
much poetry is so general as to have special interest for 
nobody. There are natural features, or traditions and 
practices so characteristic of every section, that once cele- 
brated in song or limned on canvas, the people of that 
community must read — or see — and relish them. That is 
why Howard Jones has written of local things. 

There is true poetry in the commonest sights and 
sounds, as Carlyle long ago pointed out. The only reason 
poetry is lacking to any place is that the seeing eye is 
lacking. To see and feel, and to report this knowledge 
faithfully and sincerely, remains still the highest work of 
poet and artist. Such work always gets a reading public. 
He is the true poet who opens the eyes of the less alert to 
the beauties around them. This is the true mission of 
art, be it that of the poet or that of the painter. As Brown- 
ing wrote, 

"For don't you mark ? we're made so that we love 
First when we see them painted, things we have passed 
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see." 

Because the author of "Jl Little Book of Local Verse" is 
a poet, because he has seen and sung what no one can sing 
who has not felt the rythmic sweep of the majestic Missis- 
sippi bluffs, who has not heard the message of the marsh 
lands, and loved the blue which nestles in the distant 
hills — for this reason he has given us this booklet of verse. 



That he has thrilled to nature's varied symphony no one 
can doubt after reading "June" ox "When Shall We Together" 
or "Certain Reflections at Midway." Imagination of a high 
order is evidenced in such poems as "At Eagle Bluff, " "A 
Red Leaf" and "Old Men." Felicity of phrasing makes 
"Rain on the River" a dainty piece of word-music. "Railway 
Sketches" are bits of vivid portrayal, and so are "An Aban- 
doned Cemetery" and "From Trempealeau," which show deep 
feeling and reflection upon the meanings of life. 

Howard Jones is doing for La Crosse and its environ- 
ment what Vachel Lindsay is doing for Springfield, what 
Arthur Upson and Richard Burton are doing for Minnesota, 
and what Madison Cawein did for Kentucky. That is why 
I am glad to write this introductory word. I am sure that 
we in this town shall make this booklet a success. 

DAVID ORLAND COATE. 
La Crosse, Wisconsin. 



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AN ABANDONED CEMETERY 

HPHIS is their immortality — to lie 

* Among these fields of ripening corn and rye, 
Here where the tangled shadows of old trees 
Stain the rank grass, and nodding down the breeze, 
Huge growths of fireweed swarm around the graves. 

Below their little hill the slow creek laves 
Its heap of pebbly gravel by the scar 
Of raw, red clay above, and with a jar 
Like bells of music breaking, in the turn 
Shivers against the boulders. 

Did they learn 
The permanency of all impermanent things 
Because the brook flows and the blackbird sings 
And weeds grow tall — tansy and cockle-burr 
And burdock — where the spire and altar were ? 
For look — that shameless woodbine climbs and sprawls 
Along the broken stones that once were walls, 
And sapling birches quiver in the shade 
Where once the choir sang and the organ played. 

Did they not care enough, those loving ones 
Who came with passionate tears and orisons 
And left them here with pageantry of grief ? 
Eternal sorrow, was it, then, so brief 
That they forget? Or was it God forgot 
Whom they adored in this forsaken spot, 
Since of His temple there remain alone 
This graveless space and crumbling piles of stone ? 

God whom they called Eternal — He is gone, 
And grief has dried between the night and dawn, 
That seemed eternal. Only transient grass, 
The brooklet never still, brown birds that pass 
Like winged moods across the blowing grain, 
Shadows and clouds and sunlight — these remain 

PAGE SEVEN 



Where all things else, imagined without change 
Of spirit or flesh have vanished. 

Is it strange 
These tombstones sag above the graves, or lie 
Heavy with fruitless immortality ? 

Look here : " Belove . . wife . . Aet . . Rest with God," 
And here — "sister . . peace . . her soul . ." The sod 
Is sunken where they rest, and in the noons 
The crickets sing among the grass. 

Our boons 
Come strangely to us. . . It is better so, 
Better to sleep as they do, and lie low 
Beneath the ragged shadows and the rain. 
Now they are spared the infinite sIom^ pain 
Of stirring life above them, the loud bell, 
The quavering hymns, the words of heaven and hell ; 
Them shall no trampling feet disturb, nor cries 
Of children playing make them lift their eyes, 
Vexed that the living take so little care 
To keep the fret of life away from there. 
And most of all, the futile trick of flowers 
Laid on their breasts to wither with the hours 
And force the dead remember and awaken 
From their slow sleep — this trouble, too, is taken. 
Now beyond God or man, they only have 
To keep the secure quiet of the grave, 
Here where the rain falls and the tangled leaves 
Of birch and elm trees shade them. 

Past the sheaves 
Beyond the road the distant reapers whir, 
A grosbeak startles up, a grasshopper 
Sings from a headstone — sounds that like the stream 
Are drowsier than voices in a dream. . . . 
Over them, wild flowers springing in the weeds 
Where vernal winds have sown the random seeds, 
Fireweed and golden-rod, and one slow star 
Large in the vesper east, show where they are. 

PAGE EIGHT 



T_TE tramped with me the road that day, 
* ■■• I knew his heart was good ; 
He did not gush about the sky, 
Nor ponder on a butterfly — 

He smoked his pipe a certain way, 
I knew he understood. 

A hill-side blue with spider-wort, 

Wild mustard by the road, 
A sudden flight of singing birds, 
He looked — to my laconic words 

Vouchsafed an answer more than curt, 
And ever southward strode. 

Beneath the old felt hat he wore, 
His eyes were gray and keen ; 

The sun and wind had stained his face, 

He walked with tireless, easy grace — 
An oriole ! — But I forebore, 

I knew those eyes had seen. 

Across the marshland sweet with hay 
The bluffs and meadows stood 

Like pictures painted in the sky ; 

He gabbled even less than I, 

And smoked his pipe a certain way, 

I knew his heart was good. 



PAGE NINE 






CERTAIN REFLECTIONS AT MIDWAY 

A T Midway town, at Midway town 
•**■ The dust-white road goes up and down, 
And flashing past and to and fro 
All summer long the autos go. 

They seldom stop at Midway town, — 
The place is small and dead and brown, 
A store, a station and a hall, 
A dozen houses — that is all. 

'Tis true, the meadows are as fair 
At Midway town as anywhere, 
And overhead in August skies 
The clouds careen like argosies. 

The black-eyed Susans by the way 
Curtsey and dance there every day, 
And from the wheatfields joyously 
I heard the blackbirds mock at me. 

Surely at Midway one can feel 
At night the cruising planet reel, 
And see in heaven the milky wake 
Of star-dust its propellors make. 

And yet — and yet — at Midway town 
The silver road goes up and down, 
And flashing past and to and fro 
All summer long the autos go. 



PAGE TEN 






RAILWAY SKETCHES 

I— BUNK CARS 

A ROW of broken box-cars by the track 
^~~*- Below the water-tower ; in the breeze 
A torn, blue curtain flaps uneasily 
In one rough window, and along their side 
A line of garments flutters in the wind. 
The blue smoke, rising, dances elfin-toed 
Upon the rusted stove-pipe, and beyond 
The great white sails of God go slowly by 
Along the rustling hills. . . . 

II — THE SECTION CREW 

In the chill wet dawn of a morning in the fall 

When a gray mist lies on the river, 
And the dew drenched lawn is shrouded in a pall 

And the hooded hills seem to shiver, 
I hear the squeak and rumble of a door, 

And voices that swell and echo queerly, 
The clatter and the creak of a car lifted o'er 

The tracks and dropped again — nearly. 

There's a crash of tools and the odor of a pipe 

Astray on the cool, fresh morning ; 
Silence — while the pools of the day grow ripe 

For an overflow of rain ; then a warning 
Called from the boss, and the tramp of awkward feet, 

Stiff and chill from the station ; 
A car rolls across the bridge with rhythmic beat, 

And the hollow places boom reverberation. 



PAGE ELEVEN 



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Ill — THE DEPOT 

It nestles underneath the dark green hills, 
A doll-house painted red, and past it flies 
The lean, swift limited whose whistle shrills 
In one long sobbing shriek and slowly dies. 

A straw-like arm above the chimney shifts, 

Staccato clicking puncture the still air, 

A thin bell jingles faintly, and in rifts 

Of echoing rock two crows summon to prayer. 

IV — AN EPISODE 

Drunken, blear-eyed, shambling, sodden, 
Clothed in rags and greasy-hatted 
Comes a gray old man with dirty 
Iron-gray hair into the depot. 

At the door he stands a moment 

Staring dazedly at the wood-stove ; 
To the nearest bench he lurches 
Where he sprawls in spineless comfort. 

On the wall a flyspecked placard, 

Loafing Not Aeeowed ; the agent 
Leaves his key and swearing softly, 
Kicks the fellow from the station. 



PAGE TWELVE 



"\X7"HEN shall we together 

* * Tramp beneath the sky, 
Thrusting through the weather 
As swimmers strive together, 
You and I ? 

How we ranged the valleys, 

Panted up the road, 
Sang in sudden sallies 
Of mirth that woke the valleys 

Where we strode ! 

Glad and free as birds are, 
Laughter in your eyes, 
Wild as poets' words are, 
You were as the birds are, 
Very wise. 

Not for you the prison 

Of the stupid town, 
When the winds were risen, 
You went forth from prison, 

You went down, 

Down along the river, 
Dimpling in the rain 

Where the poplars shiver 

By the dancing river, 
And again 

Climbed the hills behind you 

When the rains were done ; 
Only God could find you 
With the town behind you 
In the sun ! 



PAGE THIRTEEN 



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Don't you hear them calling, 

Blackbirds in the grain, 
Silver raindrops falling 
Where the larks are calling 
You in vain ? 

Comrade, when together 
Shall we tramp again 

In the summer weather, 

You and I together, 
Now as then ? 



PAGE FOURTEEN 



3MMMPW^ wt-' j r j11 '* ■"*-'■> ■ ; -■'■ --- " ' ■ ' ■■ " - ~*-~~ — •■* — ---" 



GRANDAD 

A TITAN, in mute agony he stands, 
■**■ Solemn and motionless and still ; the winds 
Toss his sparse hair upon their restless arms, 
And he does not complain ; the sun beats down 
Upon his hoary head and deep-scarred brow 
That saw the centuries march across the plain 
With feet of haste and fire, and yet he keeps 
Eternal silence ; and the wild-footed rain 
Tramples him, and the pitiless hail descends, 
And fierce snows freeze him and the lightning digs 
Their trenches in his antique limbs, and still 
Rebuke nor plaint he utters, still he holds 
An awful silence, as the Lord Christ stood 
And spake no word to Pilate. 

Does he dream 
Gigantic visions of an elder world 
Before the years were loosened, and the deep 
Spawned forth its monsters in primeval slime, 
While the great river rolled in majesty, 
Brimming from bluff to bluff? Or does he hear 
The thunder of the rushing buffalo 
And the wild war-drum of the Indian 
Booming across the plain or ever we, 
Following the golden pathway of the sun, 
Appeared to bruise his side ? 

Is this the stuff 
To cut and carve for worthless paving stone? 
Out of a hundred hills we could have spared, 
Is this ihe bluff ye choose to tear away 
And dump upon your streets? Shall his bones lie 
Naked upon your roadways, and no man 
Nor woman cry against it ? Shame, O shame, 
Thrice shame upon ye who have cut him down 
And thrust his sides with spears ! A poor old man, 

Page fifteen 






Tottering and stumbling in his feeble age 

Would have more reverence from ye than this hill, 

Moulded with God's own finger-tips ! The voice 

Of the great bluffs, his comrades, council-wise 

Seated along the river, should have risen, 

Spake, and rebuked ye ! What, is there no soul 

In all your city that dare reverence 

This sandstone Samson, bruised and stunned and still, 

That talked of old with God ? How long, O Lord, 

In the deep wisdom of Thy hidden ways, 

The foolish ways of men, how long, how long? 



PAGE SIXTEEN 



■■■■■■■^■■■■■■■MHBHBMBBaHNHMMaMMMNIHHHMIMMMNMI 



SUNDAY 

"X/DUR Hell and Heaven, what are they ? 

* I tramp the yellow road today, 
And deep among the grass I see 
The harebells' fairy blasphemy. 

They blow on Sunday as they blow 
On any day in all the row. 
Your Hell and Heaven, what are they ? 
/ tramp the yellow road today. 



PAGE SEVENTEEN 






ANENT THE STREETCAR 

STREETCARS? Yah !— Yellow box on wheels 
That bumps and reels 
From Farnam street to Main and back 
On a (sporadic) double track, 
Dusty or chilly — it depends, 
On the time of year, and say, 
They're always late — Lord ! Anyway, 
Don't talk streetcars here, my friends ! 

Perhaps .... 

You ought to sit on peoples' laps, 
Or kneel against the pane, your nose 
The farthest angle from your toes. 

Streetcars ? Chariots that run 

From Zanzibar to Babylon 

Past New York and the sapphire bay 

Whereby the sultan's daughters play ; 

Magic steeds of gold that fly 

Where polar bears and lions lie 

Hid in the wild 

Somewhat too neatly for a child ; 

Enchanted yellow boats that swim 

A hundred miles or maybe ten 

The oceans dim, 

Where funny little cities stand 

Just on the edges of the land, 

All ready to fall in, (They don't !) 

And full of funny little men 

Who look as if they'd bite — and won't ; 



PAGE EIGHTEEN 



And each man has a tiny shop 
Beneath the tinkly trees, 
All full of gingerbread and pop 
And drums and elephants and carts 
And dolls and candy hearts, 
And 0, such shiny, shiny seas ! 

Streetcars ? Stop ! 

Your brains need dusting — try to sneeze ! 



THE MOVIES 

r T" v HEY sit like shadows in the playhouse dim 

*■ Through half an hour's film of smiles and tears ; 
They watch life like a shadow flow, 
That cannot speak, but only walks and feels ; 
One thing they do not know : 
Within the darkened playhouse of the years, 
Themselves like moving pictures come and go 
Upon the film of Time in seven reels 
For entertainment of the seraphim. 



PAGE NINETEEN 



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FROM TREMPEALEAU 

HERE where the Indian 
Prayed to his Manitou, 
Here where the Jossakeed 
Made strong his medicine, 
Stand with me. . . . 

Below, 

The slumbrous flow 
Of waters laden down with sleep 
Beneath their immortality. . . 
The stream goes by 
Indifferently 
To seek the deep- 
Men, cities, channels, hills, like April rains 
Vanish — the stream remains. 

These solid walls that seem so strong 

Were not, and ere long 

Will not be, and this citadel 

Of rock, once rightly known, 

More evanescent than a song, 

More fluid than the brooks that swell, 

More wraith-like than Time flown. . . 

OGod, 

What hope, what hope ? 

Behold, 

The little scope, 

The life less durable than sod 

The fingers that too soon grow cold ! 

. . . The stream remains, 
Full'breasted and inscrutable, 
Indifferent to mortal pains, 
Uncognizant of man who strains 
Conquered, and yet unconquerable, 
And it is well. 

PAGE TWENTY 



He can not stop His ways remote 

And bow 

Because an ant is crushed beneath your feet ; 

His ways are other ways than ours 

Of ampler planets, stranger powers. 

Trouble Him not now 

With talk of pain 

Endured, the stricken throat, 

Lovers that part, 

A heart 

With unintended sorrow bittersweet. 

Vex not the Infinite with prattle of the dust ! 

He must 

Be busy otherwhere ; when we are slain, 

He and the stream remain. 



PAGE TWENTY -ONE 






JUNE 

BETWEEN the sun-down and the moon's slow rise 
There came a spirit down the vesper skies 
Full of glad sound and music, and with feet 
Wild and sweet 

Upon the hushed meadows, and her hair 
Darker than midnight air. 

She came with singing, and her voice was wild 
With the joy-hearted laughter of a child, 
Inmixed with tears and sudden prophecies 
Of lovelier eyes 

Than ever yet looked meekly on this earth 
At love's eternal birth. 

She sang, if singing be to give full throat 

To all shy woodland things that have no note 

Made vocal else — quaint whispers in the grass, 

Moods that pass 

Strangely across the leaves, and old, wise words 

Gossiped among the birds. 

Her eyes were deep and dear and very old, 
Lucent with starlight and with liquid gold, 
And yet a shadow brooding there to screen 
Secrets unseen, 

Fair promises of womanhood to come, 
Now sweetly hid and dumb. 

And she was clad in delicate shades of spring, 

The tender inward of a rosebud's wing, 

The timid baby green that early flushes 

In emerald blushes 

On swelling larch-leaves, and the faint-breathed pink 

Anemones do drink. 

Among the solemn-bearded, counsellor trees 
I saw her dancing with a summer breeze, 

PAGE TWENTY-TWO 



Her slender, snowy feet like flashing stars 
Across the bars 

And jetty shadows of the vesper wood, 
Willful and wild in mood. 

And through the starlet silences her singing, 

As though a thousand fairy bells were ringing 

Like little liquid fountains, to my ear 

Sweet and clear, 

Melodiously sweet and clear, outrang 

And I heard what she sang. 

I heard, but can not tell you what she sang, 

Save that the ancient meadows swiftly sprang 

To melody behind her, and the tongue 

Of each tree rung 

In laughter, and each June-time flower that swells 

Tinkled like elfin bells. 

And as I sprang to catch her and discover 

Whether, indeed, some wood god were her lover 

Who thus made music for her on the lawn, 

She was gone ! 

And I alone, and all the woods alone 

Grew silent as a stone. * 

Perchance she fled away to the sunbeams, 

Or in the secret sources of the streams 

Hides, or in silver fountains of the air, 

Or anywhere 

(Who knows?) unsearchable beneath the moon, 

This spirit that was June ! 



PAGE TWENTY-TKREE 






RAIN ON THE RIVER 

RAIN on the river ! And dance, dance, dance, 
Bobbing and tripping 
And sliding and slipping, 
One little leg dipping 
Into the stream where a drop of rain 
With a circular strain 
Melts on the river, the elf-men prance ! 

One elf to a drop, 

One drop to an elf — 
Will he never stop 

To recover himself ? 

Nay! 

Plop— plop — plop 

In the early morn 
The quick rain rattles and patters away ! 

Who could stop 
With such an orchestra set to play 

Music riddles 

And fugues that chase 
From top to bottom and back again 
At a most impossible pace ! 
If you don't believe me, listen then— 

To the hundred drums 

As small as your thumbs 
Hid just under the river's top, 

Invisible fiddles, 
A tiny horn, 
And a great big bullfrog bass ! 

And look out there on the ballroom floor 
Where every eddy has twenty score 

Of fairy dancers 

And goblin prancers ! 

PAGE TWENTY-FOUR 



Each little elf-man whirls like a top, 

In a mad, mad dance they jostle and prance, 

And skip and flop 

And slip and drop 

And never stop 
For rest or breath or a change at all 
In this incredible carnival, 

This maddest, 
Gladdest 

Kind of a ball !— 
Let them rest if they possibly can, 
They've danced on the river since day began ! 



PAGE TWENTY-FIVE 



- 



A RED LEAF 

A LITTLE child is crying in the wind, 
Yuhoo she sobs, and Yuhoo I 

I have seen her many times : 

On desolate moorlands and bleak, bare hilltops, 

On the myriad, pouting lips of the river, 

And in autumn trees, 

A tiny, red-coated girl, 

Dancing with rage and crying, 

It is the little sister of the wind. 

She has lost her doll and seeks everywhere, 
Everywhere in the world, 
Hunting for it, 
And finds it not. 



PAGE TVVENTV-SIX 



OLD MEN 

HPHE stars are old, old men. 
•■■ It is very cold in heaven, 
And they blink and huddle closer to the fire, 
Each at his separate hearthstone, 
And mourn for the good old times 
When peace and friendship 
Were everywhere found on earth. 

Their old limbs tremble, 

And their ancient teeth 

Chatter and shake in the cold. 

They draw their ragged blankets over their heads, 

And shout across the inter stellar space 

That it is very cold in heaven, 

Very cold, indeed, 

Very cold ! 

It is they who cause the winking of the stars. 

The old men tremble so 

By their firesides 

That their bodies shake like the leaves of the 

maple in autumn, 
And the light shakes, too, 
And they dance before it 
To keep warm, 
Or shiver, sitting down, 
And moan for the good old times 
That were never cold. 



PAGE TWENTY-SEVEN 



CLIMB up with me to Cliffwood and lie down 
Full-length upon the sunsoaked turf, your eyes 
Raised to the dazzling blue where August dies, 
Your head .upon your arm — so ! — and the town 
Behind you, while its troubled noises drown 
In that clear gulf of air. The great clouds rise 
In solemn silence up the summer skies, 
And autumn somewhere waits in russet brown. 

Now send your soul through yonder rift of blue 
Among those drifting islands of the sky, 

Where all is quietness. Let summer die ! 
What care we, who are borne on radiant wings 

Down depthless fields of hollow air and through 
The stainless splendor which the summer brings. 



PAGE TWENTY-EIGHT 



TP\EEP within a coulie 
*-^ An apple-orchard glows 
With startling gleams of yellow 
And little spots of rose. 

The heavy scent of summer 
Upon the valley lies, 
The smell of ripened wheat fields, 
The warmth of stainless skies. 

And buried in the clover 
Beneath the apple -trees 
A lass awaits her lover, 
A robin waits a breeze. 

The breeze will come by sunset, 
She hopes the lover may. — 
I know that apple-orchard, 
He will not come today. 



PAGE TWENTY-NINE 



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AT EAGLE BLUFF 

FROM this bold rampart, by eternity 
Thrown up against the slow assaults of change, 
The valley seems unending ; stately, slow 
The labyrinthine river winds along 
The horned bases of the solemn hills ; 
Stretches of prairie lie beyond, with wheat 
And hay and corn in patterns intricate 
Of some enormous game, the tiny barns 
And nestled houses for the counters to it. 
A marsh lies next, a bed of black and green, 
And far across, the blue Wisconsin hills 

Rim up the valley's edge. 

The colors change, 

Slow-shifting back and forth from dark to light 

By acres and by miles. It is the clouds — 

They float like pageants down the shimmering sky, 

Huge galleons of white that sail and sail 

An infinite ocean under cloudy capes 

And walled and misty towns. . . 

Those are not clouds, 

Those ponderous shapes of white! They are the gods, 

Borne on their catafalques of stainless pride 

To some gigantic grave — they are the gods, 

The ancient gods, now mercifully dead. 

They did not think to die as they desired, 

Weary with all the bitterness of heaven 

That could not help the waywardness of fools ; 

Weary, beside, with bitterness of life, 

Life everlasting, life insatiate, 

Life like a slow fire unescapable, 

Burdened with life as men with fear of death. 

Was there no other end for them, with all 
Their thunders and their priests and hecatombs, 
Thus, thus to drift in death before the wind, 

PAGE THIRTY 



No other end, O unintelligible 

And tongueless gulf of air, no other end ? 

Lo ! The white-armed, the sea-born Aphrodite, 

Lo ! The curled brow and puzzled frown of Zeus, 

Dead Pallas on her shield — O Wisdom, where, 

Where is thy cunning now ? And now Apollo 

Dead on his bier, and yet the sun still shines. 

And who are these on strange and carven barges, 

Gigantic, dim, two-headed, some like dogs 

And some like eagles — Thoth and Ophois 

And Isis and Osiris—are they dead, 

Despite the changeless pyramids, despite 

Karnak and Elephantis and the sands 

That blow round Memnon's statue ? 

Viking ships 

Bear after them the raven-guarded Odin, 
Thor with his hammer, Balder and the Norns, 
Their pyres aflame behind them where the sun 
Burns like a death-ship. 

These are almond-eyed 

And many-armed, or brown and hideous, 

Wild deities that to our western ears 

Are named uncouthly — they are dead, and India 

Knows not nor cares, and Ganges through his leagues 

Flows yet untroubled, and the Chinese bells 

Ring, and the lotos blossoms in Japan. 

And lastly comes a crucifix like snow, 
And one upon it whiter than his bier. . . 

The gods are dead. . . Only the wind drives on, 
Drives them before it as a flock of sheep. 
The gods are dead ; where are the gods? O seek, 
Seek in the upper chambers of the world 
And find them with the never-dying wind. 
It freshens now — the milk-white barges haste, 
Pass and dissolve and fall in summer rain. 

PAGE THIRTY-ONTC 



W Miwa i n 



You who have read this book., 

If you sought for a "message" in it, 

You were grandly left. 

I may be a poet — my hair is short, 
And I don't like afternoon tea — 
But I'm not a glorified messenger boy 
In the Celestial Telegraph Office, 
And I Won't run errands for the gods. 

The only message I have 

Is an old and trite one : 

Fear God, 

Love beautiful things, 

And lastly, mind your own business. 

These things comprise, as I take it, 

The whole duty of man. 



